If you want to run Discreet on your purchased Octane, whether it's new or used, just call or email Discreet. They probably have minimum requirements on OS version and disk size so prepare to shell extra cash for that

i've heard that discreet offers licenses for existing systems, yes. however, current versions may not even run on your target system (current irix releases seem to require a tezro instead of an octane2) and you'll probably need a disk-array and additional video/audio input/output-devices to make use of the software.

discreet systems are pretty expensive, the cost of the actual workstations do not have the largest share in that.

Discreet have such great products, But a price to match. I have just bought a second O2 with Effect option 3/Flint license. The first unit I had problems with the Stone array. For the local agent to even look at the box was a flat $1700 Aud fee (nearly a seat of combustion) & that was no guarantee of repair. My jaw dropped also at the upgrade costs of Hard drives for the Stone + Wire

Now I know if you are looking at buying Flame that is not allot of cash but be aware nothing is cheap! You would perhaps save money on buying a used machine with an existing license & get the license transferred into your name. This might give you a cheaper upgrade path to the current version of which ever product you are looking at buying

I have just done this with the Version 7 software on the new machine. While it is no longer supported it at least give me the opportunity to an upgrade path & access to Discreet's online forums, patches & knowledge base. Discreet can be quiet anal about giving access to these areas without the proper paper work on file, As I found out with my first system! This time around I cover all bases
Timberoz> Craig

Timberoz wrote:Discreet have such great products, But a price to match. I have just bought a second O2 with Effect option 3/Flint license.

Two questions then. First, do we get to see an example of your work with the new system? Second, are you selling the old? Is there someway you can compare the two to fix the old?

And how much did each system cost?

I keep dreaming of buying even an Flint station, but $3k, which I've seen occasionally is still more than I can currently do.

I also would love to someday get Flame 5 (last version for the Onyx), and most especially Flame 3.9.10 (last version for the Crimson). Having Flame on a Crimson might not be the most usefull thing in the world, but it would be so darn cool.

I am trying to think back for you to each purchase. The first system that I bought was a good deal, BUT there were a few quirks. The system was as follows, O2 195mhz, 384mb ram 601 Digital Option D9 Stone with 4x 4.3 gig drives which I believe gives 8mins approx off storage Original Version 6.1 Effect/Flint software, box, manuals & dongle plus 5D Monsters & a wacom 6x8 tablet. This system totalled to $2400usd & cost approx $500aud to get shipped from the USA. A few problems, The machine was sold being a 300mhz when in fact it was a 195mhz, The wacom was from a Mac & was not SGI compatible due to it being an ABD? connection & not serial. Lastly NO IRIX media was supplied with the box. The system is currently at a post production house local to the area being repaired, The software refuses to communicate with the stone, No stone, No Effect/Flint! The Stone is working & passes all tests but some quirk stops it from talking to Effect. Currently they are completely reloading the OS all media from scratch in the hope that this will resolve the issue.

Box #2 Is a full working system that came from a working studio in the USA, The seller was just AWESOME, Having suffered trauma from my first experience I when in prepared. The seller applied the Stone patch before the system was shipped & answered ever question that I asked. The license is also been transferred into my name. System #2 Was R10K 300MHZ 512mb ram Eurologic Array with 6 x 36 gig drives plus 1 spare & sled. Spare system drive. Miranda Vivo 601,Wacom 12x12 tablet. Original media including IRIX. Effect Ver 7 software + previous versions as it had been purchased new on the Indy platform. Lastly a full paper trail including original receipts for purchase & all subsequent upgrades. This system was $5400usd I plugged the box in (after I had a transform made for the drive array as it was110v only) & the system worked first time.

I am currently doing work on a film that is in production locally . I will be editing HD footage (Sony Vegas running on a dual opteron 148's 4gig ram & 4x 250 sata drives running raid 5 ATI FireGL X3) The footage has been shot on Sony HDR-FX1's with the final print being transferred back to 35mm. I also will be doing the comp work, blue screen, roto & a small amount of 3D to "Grow" teeth on talent. I was hoping to use the Effect system to do almost all of the comp work including the closing credits. If I fail.........I shall retreat back to Combustion 3 as I have had far more experience on this software. The 3D teeth are being modelled in Max 6/7

After jumping up to Effect from Combustion I found the interface clunky. The Desktop workspace was especially a foreign concept. But after having played for a short while I can see that the system is powerful, logic & very quick to get around. I really don't know what the speed differences are between Combustion & Effect as I have not pushed anything too large thought Effect as yet. But I love the fact that you are working off the drive arrays in Effect & not in ram player in C3 . There is only so much work you can squeeze into that 2gig limit in combustion (actually is about 1.7 because C3 needs approx 300mb to run) So working with Effect you are not restricted to only working with small "Chunks" of footage. Everyone seems to completely overlook this very important detail! Processing a filter is properly not any slower on the O2 than in Combustion, because as soon as you add anything to your workspace in C3 it needs to re cache the work for playback. Effect also allows you to direct import 3DS meshes into the composite window, A very nice feature IMO.

The only advantage I can see in buying say Combustion over a used Discreet systems product is "Backburner" Discreet render distribution software, It's free, fast & can work on both Max & Combustion files at the same time. This is what I have use all my 320's 1100 & 1200 servers for. I am aware you can off-board render the "systems products" to linux nodes, Only the newer versions of FFI are support (please correct me if I am wrong) & I would assume the costs to be beyond the average users budget. Owning a Effect/Flint box would still I believe serve the average user quiet well for a few more years.

Overall I am very glad with my purchases, It has been a learning curve but we all learn from our mistakes. I am in the process of building a updated web site. I will post some mov files up in the near future for viewing.

inferno and fire apparently will be discontinued after the NAB while discreet is selling off the last remaining software they have - I believe the link to this story is somewhere on this board. I don't see much of a future for flint either, what with combustion snapping at its heels.

That leaves flame and smoke, one of which is already moving to Linux and with the other not too far behind.

The other option is buying a used Media Illusion system and trading it in for a new Avid DS Nitris. This gives you a 45% discount off the £100K purchase price (i.e. £45K discount). I got that info from a senior Avid engineer two weeks ago.

Frankly, at this sort of pricing you might want to look at Quantel's eQ range instead of discreet's uncertain product line.

As for inferno: there is v3.1R2 floating around some p2p networks. Never bothered with it, though, and it is probably not licensed anyway.

I wouldn't have been surprised to hear of Discreet dumping Flint or even Flame, But Inferno.....WOW!

Maybe Toxic is every bit as good as the rumours have been indicating? But I though that this was the old Cyborg code injected with new life? Didn't Cyborg go head to head with Flame in the market place?

It will be my worst nightmare if the new discreet line turns up running on a Prism! NOoooooooooooooooooo anything but a "Burning" Purple Fridge!

inferno and fire apparently will be discontinued after the NAB while discreet is selling off the last remaining software they have - I believe the link to this story is somewhere on this board. I don't see much of a future for flint either, what with combustion snapping at its heels.

I disagree. Discreet has invested in porting flint and smoke to Linux, so I doubt they're thinking of dropping them anytime soon.

Combustion is a long way off from being any kind of a threat to flint, and discreet is quite transparently keeping certain features out of combustion to make sure that doesn't happen. For example, flint plays back material directly from disk, while combustion is limited to clunky RAM caching for previews. There's a huge difference in interactivity between those two methods.

Discreet is more than likely looking for new hardware solutions for fire and inferno, as they have hinted:

We asked Discreet's Maurice Patel what now for the future of inferno and fire. "Now that would be telling!" he remarked. "We have been working for some time on evaluating alternative hardware configurations that could still provide the hallmark performance that clients expect of their inferno or fire systems: i.e. as much interactive power as possible particularly when working with high-resolution media." Discreet would not be drawn further other than to say that they hope to make an further annoucement at next years NAB in Las Vegas.

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also:

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It would appear ideal for discreet to find a new platform for the fire and inferno brands as in many countries the "brand cachet" of Inferno is extremely strong. Any such move would need to address the growth of integrated solutions involving high resolution editing, effects and digital intermediate soltuons. "We are seeing a number of facilities invest in integrated high-performance DI infrastructures that include inferno, fire, lustre and supporting infrastructure such as the stone shared SAN and/or Discreet’s switchable storage solution," according to Patel. Discreet offers one of the few fully functional integrated suites of products that can work interactively in client supervised sessions at virtually any resolution, SD, HD or film.

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I think there is still a big market for discreet's high end products, especially given the increasing use of HD and forthcoming higher resolution digital formats like digital 2K and 4K systems (Viper Filmstream, Dalsa Origin) in production.

Timberoz wrote:I wouldn't have been surprised to hear of Discreet dumping Flint or even Flame, But Inferno.....WOW!

The Onyx is discontinued. Discreet hasn't said they are dumping Inferno or Fire, just that they possibly won't sell current configurations past NAB 2005. Perhaps they will be running out Inferno on Tezro. Perhaps they will be dumping it. Who knows.

To my understanding, Inferno offers capabilities that Flame doesn't. I'd be shocked if Discreet would take a move that would leave that sort of gap in their product line, but then, I don't know what they can do to work around this either. Some of those capabilities probably were dependent on IR graphics (the original motion tracker was computed using the accumulation buffer, but I don't know of any more recent possible examples), but they might be able to work around that. Still, what other system has the bandwidth for two streams of 2K video? I haven't heard of any linux machines that could do it. It sounds like they barely can do 1 stream.

Timberoz wrote:Maybe Toxic is every bit as good as the rumours have been indicating? But I though that this was the old Cyborg code injected with new life? Didn't Cyborg go head to head with Flame in the market place?

It will be my worst nightmare if the new discreet line turns up running on a Prism! NOoooooooooooooooooo anything but a "Burning" Purple Fridge!

You hate, it, but I suspect that a Prism is the best option for Inferno. With the Onyx gone, what other system that has graphics can handle multiple streams of 2K cineon bandwidth? I'm sure some POWER machines can, but that would require a fairly custom setup (though PCI-X FireGL cards with their drivers ported to linux on POWER5 might not be too out of reach, but I'm not sure that a single PCI-X 133 bus is going to have enough bandwidth, regardless of Prism or POWER.).

I have heard a lot of people in the industry say that a flame more than fulfills all their editing needs and they see no need for an inferno.

My speculation is that discreet might at some point combine ffi into one single high-end product. Regarding the platform...well, if workstations are not up for the task then you can always get a mainframe or a supercomputer -or a combination of both. As long as somebody is paying for it...